Jean Gittins eats her first salad (see September 1):
Pak choi is not normally used in European cuisine and Ethel was unwilling to try it, but she noted the obvious relish with which Jeanne ate her salad and quickly changed her mind. It turned out to be delicious too when lightly cooked in oil.
Source:
Jean Gittins, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire, 1982, 107
Death of Bruna Rose Humphreys aged 55.
Note:
The Camp Roll at the Yahoo Stanley Group lists Alfred David Humphreys as B. R.'s husband, but this is contradicted by the list at Hong Kong War Diary, which states that A. D.'s wife was that Elizabeth who died at Tweed Bay Hospital on 8.5. 43, and by Mundia, which suggests that she (B.R.) was the wife of internee Ernest Humphreys (born 1884:)
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.ht…
http://www.mundia.com/cn/Person/16469794/1101015898
As 1944 drags on, it gets harder and harder to tolerate the foibles of the other internees.
George Wright-Nooth writes in his diary:
The Fomosan guard...offered cigarettes for sale at MY30 ((thirty Japanese Military Yuan)) a packet...there were some raving idiots who bought them but, foolish as this is, it is better than the bare-faced degraded begging - it makes me sick to see it - of cigarettes from the guards. It is always the same people who do it; they are like a lot of Chinese beggars with outstretched, clutching hands. The guards, rightly so, treat them with contempt and when they have grovelled enough they may get a cigarette among four or five.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of he Turnip Heads, 1994, 191
Death of Francis Arthur Sutton, aged 60.
Francis 'One Arm' Sutton celebrated his sixtieth birthday on February 14, 1944. He wrote in his diary:
I am young no longer, ambition to take the world by storm has passed me and gone. I remember my many failures. I flee from life and do not pursue it, as formerly....Enthusiasm in starting each new job and brushing aside all obstacles is not wholehearted. What's the good? comes too easily to my mind.
He’d had an eventful life: born to a Lincolnshire parson in 1884 and educated at Eton and London University, he’d been a South American railway builder before the war, and lost an arm to a hand-grenade at Gallipoli. He was lobbing back time-lag hand-grenades into the Turkish trenches but after successfully returning six he fell foul of one that had cunningly had its fuse shortened, and it blew his right arm off at the wrist. The thrower, a huge Turkish soldier, leapt into Sutton’s trench to finish the job with his bayonet. Sutton, with no weapon and only his left arm, managed to deflect the bayonet into his thigh. There followed a desperate struggle rolling in the dust during the course of which Sutton was almost knocked out by a rock– it was thrown by a fellow British soldier but failed to find its target and hit Sutton on the head instead. The Turk managed to get on top of the semi-comatose Englishman and was strangling the life out of him when Sutton groped around with his one remaining hand and managed to locate a Gurkha kukri, which he plunged into his assailant’s throat. As the struggle ended, Sutton noticed he’d bitten off the other man’s ear. (I am not making this up – someone else may be, probably Sutton himself, but not me!).
How could such a man not go gold mining in the frozen wastes of newly Bolshevik Siberia? And how could he have avoided being asked to re-organize one of the Red navies? Next he decided to try his luck in war-torn Republican China, seeking to interest one of the rival war-lords in the products of his fertile military inventor’s imagination, and in his own martial skills. The Chinese general who was besieging Sutton and summoned him to negotiate terms of surrender should have known that the resourceful but not overly scrupulous Englishman would shoot him before making a James Bond like escape. Sutton eventually became a general for China’s famous ‘Old Marshall’ Chang Tso-Lin. He made and lost three fortunes in the course of all this.
Sutton was billeted in Block 4, Room 18, along with seven others. He was severely overweight by this time, and his mutilated arm made it impossible for him to sleep soundly in any position but flat on his back; the result was massive and re-echoing snoring. Sutton, to the immense gratitude of his roommates managed to get hold of a tennis ball and had it sewn into his pajama jacket so as to make it impossible for him to sleep on his back. Then he taught himself to get a decent night’s rest on his side.
That story shows that at least some of the determination and courage that had marked Sutton’s life were still with him at the start in Stanley. Sadly these qualities were worn down. His decline after that despairing birthday entry was ‘shockingly rapid’ and his biographer Charles Drage puts down his death to ‘slow starvation’ undermining ‘not so much his superb physique but his always vulnerable emotions’.
He was put on a ‘Special Diet’ but to no avail, and he was eventually admitted to Tweed Bay Hospitalwith ‘beriberi, avitaminosis and bacillary dysentery’ – Drage suggests a simpler diagnosis would have been ‘hunger and heartbreak’. Mrs Anslow, who was nursing in Tweed Bay Hospital at the time, agreed, saying he died from ‘malnutrition and despair’. The end came at 10 a.m. on today. He asked for his clothes to be divided amongst his fellow prisoners, a much needed final act of charity.
Source:
Charles Drage, General of Fortune, 1973 edition
Les Fisher in Shamshuipo:
I had a postcard from Win and Bert ((Cox)) in Stanley and both are well. However I can still get no news of Andy ((James Anderson)) as the money I sent has been returned. The only clue I have is that I managed to decipher a half erased remark on the form that ((Major Cecil)) Boon had, which said 'removed from camp.' I tackled the stooges and Boon about it, but they did not help.
Source:
Les Fisher I Will Remember, 1996, 153
Note: James Anderson was in Stanley Prison for his role in operating a secret radio in Stanley. Major Cecil Boon, the senior British officer in Shamshuipo, was court-martialled for collaboration after the war and acquitted.
Suicide attempts are rare in camp - perhaps surprisingly. And today's attempt is not on account of the general camp conditions: a woman involved in the black market tries twice to kill herself because she's being threatened by the guards because she's defaulted on payment for some articles they've provided.
Source:
Franklin Gimson, Diary, Weston Library, Oxford, p. 105 (verso)
Wright-Nooth's diary:
There is no water in camp except for one small well and how can this supply the needs of over 2,000 people?...{Lieutenant} Hara realizes the seriousness of the situation and has been in constant conference with Gimson....Gimson has suggested a move to Shamshuipo POW camp but the Japanese will not consider it....Digging has started....The water diviners were out this morning - there were plenty of aspirants -and certain places marked out as possibilities.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 208
Note:
See also November 27, 1944
There's a meeting in connection with the Proposed United Council of the Hong Kong Protestant Churches in the Quarry at 3 p.m. (Assuming, of course, that nothing stopped those summoned in a notice of October 30 from going ahead.)
The first objective of the Council was to be to provide 'an inter-denominational and interracial fellowship of the Protestant Churches of Hong Kong'. Putting 'interracial' squarely at the start suggests the new thinking about race that was emerging, albeit unevenly, in Stanley Camp. And the third objective suggests even more strongly a reformist agenda: 'to further the application of Christian principles to the solution of social and racial problems...'
Those involved the Reverend Alaric Rose (Anglican), the Rev. J. E. Sandbach (Methodist), Eric Himsworth and Dr. Uttley.
Source:
Hong Kong Public Records Office, HKMS111 1-1
Birth of Roy Francis Denton - this is an approximate date: for more details, click this link.
Roy's mother was Ivy Denton (née Thirlwell).
The water supply is restored this morning. Franklin Gimson is grateful to the Camp authorities for working with the Governor's Office to bring this about. Nevertheless, a delighted Hasegawa tells him that the internees should proceed 'with the construction of tanks, wells, latrines etc. in order to prepare for any emergency'.
Source:
Franklin Gimson Diary, Weston Library, Oxford, p. 104 (recto)
Although matters have been improved by the experience of war and internment, the vicious racism of 'old Hong Kong' survives both in attitude and regulation.
This morning Franklin Gimson meets Vincent Morrison of the Police, a re-captured escaper who has fallen in love with the woman who nursed him when he was released half-dead from Stanley Prison. The problem is that Marie Barton's mother is Sino-Portuguese, which means that Morrison will lose his job for marrying a Eurasian.
Morrison tells Gimson that the Commissioner of Police has told him that he has six months to prove that the Barton family were 'of pure Portuguese descent'. Gimson feels sorry for him, and considers that if he placed his case before the Secretary of State {in London} he would be allowed to keep his job and stay in the police. He offers him the possibility of a transfer to another force, but doesn't think he'll accept.
Source:
Franklin Gimson Diary, Weston Library, Oxford, p. 110 (recto)
Death of Ernest Thomas Warden, a 44 year old revenue officer.
Before being sent to Stanley he was held at the Tai Koon Hotel.
Sources:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 188
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html#_Toc43367497
Commissioner of Police J. Pennefather-Evans is a fervent Christian and member of the Oxford Group ((later Moral Rearmament, now Initiatives For Change)). He's been approaching his police officers to try to persuade them to attend Group meetings. In his diary for today George Wright-Nooth records that recently he appeared to have been successful as five of the police turned up at a meeting. One of them became very emotional and began to confess his past sins 'with vivid descriptive detail'. Pennefather-Evans eventually jumped up and ordered the man to stop.
Wright-Nooth suspects a 'leg-pull'. He stresses that he personally always found the Commissioner a 'very fair and decent man'.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner Of The Turnip Heads, 1994, 198
Wright-Nooth's diary:
This afternoon we struck water at 16 feet. I must say we did not expect it.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 209
Death of 74 year old architect Ernest Manning Hazeland.
Before being sent to Stanley he was held in room 507 of the Mee CHow Hotel.
His wife Helene Clare is also an internee.
Sources:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 188
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html#_Toc43367497
The Hong Kong University Senate meets in camp. It looks forward to the post-war situation - 'a unique opportunity for a new start'. The expansion of the university is called for, with a new site and buildings prepared over a 3-5 year period:
There would be a grave danger of the future being crabbed if it were suggested that a small start be made in the hope that the institution would grow.
This is an act of courageous optimism and faith in the future: camp rations have never been lower and the internees have just entered a long, hard winter with an electricity supply that's intermittent at best, and it's only three days since the water crisis was resolved.
Source:
Clifford Matthews and Oswald Cheung, Dispersal and Renewal: Hong Kong University During The War Years, 1998, 401
Note: see also entries for July 16, 1943 and September 5, 1944
George Wright-Nooth spots a new face among the Japanese calling the morning roll. Suzy Potts tells him that he's a Roman Catholic priest who the police call 'Father John' and that he's done good work for 'our troops in other camps'. 'This may be so' notes Wright-Nooth with a degree of scepticism.
But as he learns later any scepticism is unjustified. The new 'face' is that of the interpreter Kiyoshi Watanabe, a Lutheran (not RC) pastor, usually known as 'Uncle John'. Without ever betraying his country in any way, this man constantly risks torture and death to bring practical, emotional and spiritual aid to the defeated.
Source:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 227
See also entry for December 25, 1944
Death of Achilles George Dann, a 56 year old commercial traveller.
Before being sent to Stanley he was held in room 305 of the Stag Hotel.
Sources:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 188
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html#_Toc43367487
Note:
The CWGC site wrongly records his death as 25/11/44:
http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/3169475/DANN,%20ACHILLES%20GEORGE
Dr. Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and former Hong Kong Daily Press journalist Neil Esmond Hunter are released from prison in an amnesty to celebrate the start of the Pacific War.
Selwyn-Clarke is sent to Ma Tau-wai Camp to join his wife Hilda and his daughter Mary who had already been sent there from Stanley.
Sources:
Russell S. Clark, An End to Tears, 1946, 146
Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Footprints, 1975, 93